


Apocrypha, or How Chuck Learned to Stop Worrying and Love His Red Pen

by trinityofone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Meta, The Winchester Gospels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinityofone/pseuds/trinityofone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bobby is kind of a dick, Sam skips out on dish duty, Castiel attempts to acquire a hobby, Dean does inappropriate things with jam, and Chuck’s not sure what story he’s writing anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apocrypha, or How Chuck Learned to Stop Worrying and Love His Red Pen

He made Castiel go back for his bird.

It was not, Chuck later acknowledged, the most rational of demands, bird health and safety hardly being a priority in the midst of an apocalypse. But Lucifer was on the verge of rising, archangels were storming his house, and Chuck had just been caught trying to order hookers by an angel of the Lord. When, following a battle that apparently occurred mainly on a plane of existence a mere mortal like Chuck couldn’t comprehend, Castiel reappeared requesting a hasty retreat, it honestly didn’t seem like crazyville that Chuck should freeze, panicked, and plead, “What about Bill?”

Which was how Castiel ended up appearing at Bobby Singer’s doorstep requesting sanctuary for himself, Chuck, and a parakeet.

When ( _if_ ) Chuck wrote this up, he was probably going to leave that last part out.

* * *

Writing, Chuck had always believed, was about making choices. What you didn’t include was as important as what you did. When Chuck began dreaming the _Supernatural_ saga (dreaming Sam and Dean Winchester’s _lives_ ), he wrote down everything he saw. _Everything_ —which meant hundreds of pointless conversations and events that never made it to the final drafts, or often even to the second ones. One scene of the brothers arguing about something trivial could work to establish their contradictory (and complementary) characters; two might help drive the point home; three was dragging the pacing limping toward snoozeville.

So it wasn’t like he’d never before viewed his visions with an editor’s eye; nevertheless, it was different now. Doubly so: first, because following the revelation that what he was writing was _real_ , not the creation of his fevered, alcohol-soaked imagination, it had occurred to him that he was not actually a writer so much as a heavenly transcriber. And second, because after Cas had shown up with Dean and gone all rebel yell on them (or maybe, more accurately in his case, all rebel emphatic whisper), the visions had gotten…really weird.

They felt mutable now, not so certain. Less like heavenly commands and more like heavenly _strongly-worded suggestions_. Sometimes Chuck would dream things after they occurred—which was how he got a glimpse of the revised, and almost equally full of fail, version of Lucifer’s rise. (And even with Dean there to make things slightly less sucktastic than they’d been in the original, he still really could have done without _that_ in full-color and surround sound, thank you very much.) Sometimes his dreams would pause, would backtrack and rewind and start again with a slightly different slant midway through. And often, the act of telling their little war council of Dean and Sam and Castiel and Anna and Bobby about what he had seen would be enough to negate what was supposed to happen, or at least alter it substantially. It got to the point where he frequently dreamed about telling them all about a dream he had had before he even woke from the first dream and registered that he’d had it.

It was at times like these that Chuck was really glad he’d made Castiel go back for Bill.

“I don’t know, Bill.” Chuck picked the parakeet up out of his cage and set him down on the comforter adorning the bed that was, for the foreseeable future, Chuck’s. Bill hopped forward a couple of steps, tentatively. “I kind of miss being a bad writer of failed pulp novels.” Bill pecked hopefully at Chuck’s finger. “When you’re a writer”—which it had turned out he _wasn’t_ —“you have this weird kind of power. Your characters are totally under your control. You can do anything to them—all kinds of horrible, awful things—and when you make them miserable, it feels _good_ , even if in your heart of hearts you’re rooting for them—maybe especially then. Because their suffering serves the story, and the story—”

Well, the story was _everything_ , wasn’t it? But now the story was _real life_ , and his characters were _real people_ , and worse, he was _one_ of them, caught up in at all and as helpless as any of them to fight his way out. He’d written himself into the ultimate corner.

Chuck sighed and picked his parakeet back up, then stood and returned him gently to his cage. He let fall the delicate wire latch. “Thanks for listening, Bill.”

Yeah, there was no way any of this was going in.

* * *

Castiel obviously wasn’t used to having free time—angels apparently didn’t get much in the way of vacation days. Now that he had only one piece of (possibly not-so-) heavenly business to attend to, and it wasn’t all that safe for him to stray too far from Bobby’s heavily-warded house, it was clear that he was struggling a bit to adjust to having down time—minutes or hours or days to fill however he pleased. Chuck had to laugh the second time he saw Castiel settle himself on a quiet corner of the porch in order to engage in some “divine contemplation” only to have Dean slink into his personal space and declare, “You need a new hobby, Cas.”

It wasn’t until he watched them head over to the beater Dean was working on that Chuck realized that this moment was a rerun only to him: he’d dreamt it, but until right now, none of them had lived it. All right, it wasn’t like it was a crucial incident in the narrative—a bit of character color, a touch of humor, nothing more—but nevertheless, he should have been able to _tell_. Having déjà vu 24/7 must be taking its toll: he was really losing it.

“I think I’m losing it,” he told Bobby—who had deigned to speak to him, if only to remind Chuck that it was his turn to do the dishes. (Chuck had mentioned the fact that he was pretty sure it was Sam’s turn, but Bobby had just growled that Sam was busy.)

Bobby slapped a sponge into his hand. “There. Now you’re all set.”

“It’s definitely going in the gospel that Bobby can be kind of a dick,” Chuck told Bill later.

It didn’t matter that his readers—if he ever again had readers—probably wouldn’t care about minor Singer household dishwashing disputes. He’d work it in somehow.

* * *

It was Bobby’s house, but sometimes he disappeared for hours at a time. It wasn’t a terribly large house, but it had a lot of nooks and add-ons and hidey-holes; nevertheless, Chuck was pretty good at knowing where to find everybody should he need them—or, less likely, should they need him. Dean and Castiel were usually either in the living room with the books or out in the yard with the cars; Sam spent a lot of time down in the basement. Bobby, though: Bobby was either everywhere—sneaking up on Chuck and making him yelp—or nowhere, vanished for hours. Chuck found his movements more frustratingly stealthy than Castiel’s, and the angel could _actually_ teleport or whatever.

Finally Chuck caught a flash of something in a dream, a few seconds of Bobby running up the hill toward the house from the direction of the scrubby woods out back, alert and hustling at the sound of Sam’s shout (long story; read the gospels) enough to give him a clue to where the old hunter vanished to all the time. Chuck was bored one day—when he wasn’t drinking himself into a stupor or seeing things, he apparently wasn’t much use to anybody—so he decided to go check it out. Tried to be stealthy about it, too, but he had neither Bobby’s nor Castiel’s skill, and the branches kept tripping him up, catching on his bathrobe and making him feel like a big, Arthur Dentish loser. Luckily he had the sense to stop far enough away to make it unlikely that Bobby would _instantly_ see or hear him. The older man looked pretty involved in what he was doing, anyway: standing at the foot of a tree and regarding the…ground? with hunched shoulders and an intensity that Chuck could recognize even just seeing the line of his back. _The grizzled old hunter stared down the old oak_ —Chuck was pretty sure it was an oak. Maybe— _with an intense stare._ Wait, no—

“You need something, boy?”

Chuck started back, catching his sleeve on a branch and generally making an even more ridiculous amount of noise than he apparently already had been. “Uh…” he said.

Bobby had half-turned, and Chuck could now see that what he’d been staring at wasn’t the tree—oak or otherwise—but a simple stone grave marker. Um. _Awkward._

“I’ll just be back at the, you know, house,” Chuck said, and began making his graceless, fumbling way back through the trees.

Later, when he started to try to write up this scene—because sometimes he just had to write _something_ ; he couldn’t help it, it was a compulsion, it made him almost physically ill not to—it was only then, with his hands hovering over the keys, that his half-unconscious eye for detail informed him of the fact that Bobby had had books strewn about his feet in the grass—books and a rifle and a third of a bottle of Jack. Apparently the guy couldn’t even go visit his wife’s grave without taking it all with him.

Chuck thought maybe he’d work on something else. There had to be at least _one_ key figure in the end of the days who didn’t totally depress him.

* * *

“Shurley!” Bobby barked.

“Don’t call me ‘Shurley,’” Chuck mumbled, half-heartedly.

“Got a prophesy for you.” He drew Chuck’s gaze away from the kitchen table, where he was slicing his red pen across pages of his own hackish prose, and toward the jumble of dirty plates and cups that had once again taken over the sink. “Half an hour from now, that mess’ll be gone.”

“Maybe because _Sam_ will have done them?” Chuck said, and _that_ wasn’t exactly a mumble. Actually, it was pretty loud.

Bobby said, “He’s _busy_ ,” which was exactly what he’d said _the last three times._

“ _I’m_ busy!” Chuck stood up so fast he almost knocked over his chair. “I’m working!” He stabbed his finger toward his scramble of marked-up pages. “Writing is _hard_ ,” he reiterated for what felt like the thousandth time.

“Uh-huh.” Bobby looked…as usual, Chuck couldn’t find the right word, but it went beyond ‘skeptical.’ “Well, how ’bout I give it a shot, and you can finish re-warding the house, then fix that leaky faucet upstairs that one of you idjits managed to bust up?”

Oh, _right_ —because any asshole could write, but it took a _real man_ to be able fix faucets and perform powerful magics. Chuck just managed to bite back a foolish and spiteful, “Fine!” Instead he went with a whiny, “I’ve done the dishes like five times in a row!” which was just…yeah. Not a line that was going anywhere near paper.

“Cas hasn’t done them even _once_ ,” he continued, since there really wasn’t much lower he could sink. He inclined his head toward the couch, where the angel was reclining, an airport paperback of _The Da Vinci Code_ held open by broad fingers.

“Are you seriously trying to pawn your dish duty off on an angel?” Dean demanded, having apparently come inside when he heard the shouting(/whining).

“I don’t mind, Dean,” Castiel said, swinging his feet around to the floor. “I have been…idle.”

“You’re allowed to take a break and read a shitty book once in a while. Although…” Dean got a closer look at the cover. “Bobby, why do you even _have_ that?”

“Would someone just do the damn dishes?” Chuck had seen Bobby look calmer when he was about to waste something nasty.

“I said I would do them,” Castiel replied, stepping forward.

“Cas—”

“It’s fine, Dean.”

They exchanged one of those long, intense looks that Chuck couldn’t really make sense of and so kept making it to the page as, _Dean stared at Castiel intensely_ or _Castiel regarded Dean with intensity_ or _Both of their expressions intense, Dean and Castiel stared at each other_. Chuck wondered if maybe Bobby had a thesaurus.

“I’ll wash and you dry, all right?” Dean said finally, stepping around Castiel. There was something about his mouth that made him look anxious, wary—like he couldn’t stand the thought of Castiel getting his hands _wet_ , let alone dirty. Chuck filed that away, in case he ever needed more details to reinforce his “Dean is kind of fucked up” characterization. Which he didn’t.

“Well, this has been an excellent use of our time,” Bobby said, glaring at each of them in turn—his gaze lingering particularly long on Chuck. He stomped out, leaving Chuck with little to do but sink sheepishly back into his chair. His red pen, hastily discarded, had left a big red blotch on top of one of the few paragraphs he didn’t actually hate.

Later, back in his room, Chuck wrote up the scene of Dean and Castiel doing the dishes, even though it was of no relevance whatsoever. He took particular care with the detail of Dean showing Castiel how to roll up his sleeves, of the sly grin on Castiel’s face when Dean flicked a little water at him and then pretended to look innocent. He figured it was probably one of the only things he had witnessed lately—either in his head or out—that didn’t make him feel like crap. That had to be worth writing about, at least a little.

* * *

Whenever Anna showed up, Chuck had to fight the urge to hide. It wasn’t his fault: she was really hot and really scary and Chuck had written her and Dean having really graphic sex and maybe-sorta-kinda gotten off on it. That would be enough to make _anyone_ uncomfortable.

Dean, on the other hand—who after all, had actually _had_ the really graphic sex—seemed perfectly at ease with her, and sometimes things like that made Chuck feel ridiculously jealous now that he knew Dean was a real person, and not just part of a macho wish-fulfillment fantasy on Chuck’s part. Next thing Chuck knew, Han Solo would land the Millennium Falcon in the middle of the salvage yard and divest Leia of her gold bikini while Chuck watched. And then Chuck would have to write about it, semi-tastefully.

So maybe Chuck felt a teensy bit of spiteful glee when Anna dismissed Dean’s little winking grin with an “I need to talk to Sam.”

Dean’s smile shut down. “He’s downstairs.”

Chuck didn’t want to deal with this shit, so he took the last brownie (Castiel was experimenting with baking) and went up to his room. “It’s no use, is it, Bill?” he asked, brushing crumbs out of his beard. “I don’t understand angels and I don’t understand women.”

Bill chirped something that was probably _You poor fucker_ in bird.

Chuck sighed and lay down on the bed. Sleep hit him like a freight train.

* * *

_“I need to talk to Sam,” the angel Anna said, turning disdainfully away from Dean’s lecherous grin._

_Dean scowled at being rebuffed. “He’s downstairs.”_

_The pair of them descended to the basement, Anna’s shiny copper hair shining like a beacon, penetrating the oppressive darkness. The door to the panic room was open, perfectly framing the single, solitary figure sitting on the metal cot. Sam’s head was bent, his strong, muscular arms swathed in white, sterile bandages, giving him the appearance of a partially unwound mummy. His legs were drawn up under his body in a meditative position. He looked up with hooded eyes as Anna and Dean entered._

_“Hey, Sammy. How’s it going?” Dean asked quietly, hanging back a little._

_Anna marched straight past him to the cot. She sat down at Sam’s side and, with little more than a quiet nod from him, began to unpeel the bandages along his left shoulder._

_“These are looking good,” she said, revealing the winding, black lines of an elaborate tattoo. It curled all the way around his bicep and down his forearm, extending even onto the palm of his hand, where it still looked painfully red along the edges of the ink. Sam’s face revealed nothing as Anna’s fingers traced over his skin. In the doorway, Dean fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot._

_“Maybe I should get Cas? He could probably help with this.”_

_Anna shook her head, her hair rippling like liquid fire. “That isn’t necessary.” Her gaze returned to Sam. “I’ve figured out the next group of symbols. It’ll probably be best to draw them along here”—she traced a line through the air, hovering just above Sam’s collarbone—“and up along here,” she continued, brushing Sam’s hair away from his neck, continuing her invisible path along the curve of his throat and up onto the stubbled skin of his cheek._

_Dean frowned and shook his head. “You don’t have to do this, Sam.”_

_“Yeah, I do, Dean.” Sam looked at his brother for the first time since he’d entered the room. “You know I do.”_

_“Well, maybe I should, too—” Dean began, but Anna cut him off with a single glance of her piercing green eyes._

_“You don’t require this kind of protection.” Her gaze drifted momentarily up. “You’re protected in other ways.”_

_“Yeah, but—”_

_“This is my decision, Dean,” Sam said, looking stronger, more energized, than he had in a while. He flexed his fingers, watching the black lines as they extended and contracted with the movement. “I’m not going to let myself get used again.” He met his brother’s gaze defiantly. “I’m not.”_

_Dean looked away first. “Sam…Sammy, I’m so_

Chuck stared at the blinking cursor. He needed a break. He didn’t want to do this anymore.

“I’m going downstairs, Bill,” he said.

Not wanting to be the type of guy who made a habit of lying to his bird, he went downstairs. He was surprised to see Sam sitting at the kitchen table; he made an effort not flinch away from him. Sam continued to perform the very sinister action of eating a grilled cheese sandwich. There were fresh bandages on his neck and on the side of his face.

Chuck didn’t need to be psychic to see how the dark lines would continue to advance across Sam’s body, keeping him safe from possession, from Lucifer’s will, but eating along with his unmarked skin his last chance at a normal life.

He started as a plate was slapped into his hands. Dean was standing in front of the stove, a spatula in one hand. “Take that out to Bobby, would you?”

Chuck blinked at him. “He’s on the porch,” Dean enunciated, as if speaking to a small child. “You want one?” he added, as Chuck turned mechanically away. “I can put bacon or tomato in it.”

“Sure,” Chuck said.

He stepped blinking out into the light. Bobby was sitting to one side, cleaning a bunch of guns. In the early days, Chuck had been really careful, trying to get all the gun details right. He wanted his series to be _authentic_. If Chuck himself was a character he was writing, some poor schmuck of a bad writer who’d gotten sucked into his own fictional world, this would be the kind of detail his writer-self would find _hilarious_.

“Sandwich,” he said, handing it to Bobby.

“Thanks,” Bobby said.

Chuck let the screen door slam shut behind him. The sound rattled around inside his skull. Despite his best efforts, he wasn’t doing a good job shaking the scene he’d been writing. It used to be kind of funny when he’d freak himself out with his own stories, get paranoid crossing a parking lot to his car in the dark—uh oh, what if monsters were really real, oh noes! Now, though, he was finding it even more impossible to shake off the quiet, domestic horrors of the Winchesters’ situation, because it was _his_ situation, because he was sitting at a table sharing grilled cheese with them.

Dean opened the fridge and got out a jar of strawberry jam, then slid onto his chair. He took a knife and liberally scooped some of the jam onto his plate, then spread it thickly atop the sandwich.

Chuck found himself stunned into speech. “Oh, man. That is so gross.” In case he ever doubted that the Winchesters were real, here was proof: Chuck could convince himself that he could come up with rugarus, but never anything _that_ disgusting.

Sam snorted. “I know, man. I’ve been putting up with this for _years_.”

Dean leaned back in his chair, his mouth full. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

Sam set his own sandwich down. “I _did_ try it. You _made_ me, remember?”

“What?” Dean’s mouth was still full. “I was just trying to raise you right!”

This got him an eyeroll. Chuck was almost nearly on the verge of a laugh when Dean pushed his plate toward him. “Come on, try it. I want it in the gospel that strawberry jam on grilled cheese tastes _delicious_.”

“Uh, the gospel doesn’t take requests,” Chuck said, primly.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean continued, undeterred. He spoke in a normal tone of voice, but Castiel appeared anyway—walking in from the living room, though still arriving as if summoned. “Taste this and tell these heathens that heaven approves of my sandwiches.”

“I can only tell them whether _I_ approve of your sandwiches,” Castiel said, but he leaned over and took a delicate bite. They all watched the rhythm of his throat as he chewed and swallowed.

“I approve, Dean,” he said finally, and Chuck wondered if he would go so far as to call Castiel’s expression a smile if he wrote this down.

He wondered: “Do you even have taste buds that, like, work like actual human taste buds?”

“No,” grumbled Sam.

The other two ignored him. “You, uh,” Dean said. “You got some jam on you.”

Chuck turned his head in time to see Dean licking his index finger clean.

It was a good thing this scene wasn’t important to the narrative. Chuck clearly wasn’t doing a very good job following what was going on.

Sam had finished his sandwich and was scratching guiltily at his bandages. “You all right?” Dean asked, his focus suddenly redirected.

Sam returned his hands flat to the table. “A little itchy. It’s nothing.”

“I can help with that,” Castiel said, reaching out a hand with two fingers extended.

Sam pulled back. “I said it’s _fine_.”

“Uh,” said Chuck. “I guess I’ll do the dishes.”

* * *

_sorry,” he said._

* * *

Chuck woke up breathing hard. For several long seconds he just stared at the ceiling. That…could not have been a dream. Well, obviously it was _a_ dream, but it couldn’t have been a _dream_. That was not something that was going to happen. It just was _not_.

“No way, Bill,” he said. “No way.”

Of course, if it wasn’t a _dream_ , it was just something Chuck’s crazy subconscious had cooked up on its own, and that…was that more disturbing than it being a vision, heaven-sent? Maybe it was. Chuck was pretty sure he didn’t, you know, roll like that.

Of course, he’d been pretty sure that _Dean_ — That freakin’ _angels_ —

He didn’t want to go downstairs. He didn’t want to stay up here, either.

He went over and got Bill out of his cage and let him hop around on his bedspread for a while. “I bet it’s nice being a bird, huh, Bill? I mean, birds don’t have a lot of problems…”

Chuck waited until he was instinctively pretty sure that no one was in the kitchen before sneaking downstairs. Unfortunately, his instincts sucked: both Dean and Castiel were sitting at the small table. Castiel had a worn copy of “The Waste Land” splayed open with his thumb and Dean was slurping his way through a bowl of Fruit Loops. Chuck kind of wished it was anything other than Fruit Loops.

They were oblivious to the fact that Chuck seemed twitchy. But then, Chuck was willing to acknowledge, he often seemed twitchy. There was a lot in the world to make him twitch. For example: Dean turning to look at him with a white ribbon of milk trailing down his chin. Chuck really didn’t need to see that right now.

“We’re out of milk,” Dean said. He instantly appeared to lose interest in Chuck, turning back and lightly kicking Castiel under the table. “Cas, stop reading depressing poetry and talk to me.”

Castiel gently closed the book and laid it down. “What do you wish to talk about?”

Dean shrugged. “Nothing in particular. Let’s see if you’re actually capable of having a real conversation.”

The angel’s eyebrow went up. “Our conversations have not been real?”

Dean shook his head. “You’re usually all business, Cas. You should practice your small talk.” A flash of a grin: “I can teach you some pick-up lines.”

The mug Chuck was filling with coffee slipped out of his hand and crashed to the floor. “Shit! Sorry. Sorry!”

Dean snorted. “Bet you didn’t see _that_ coming, huh?”

“Oh, prophet humor, very nice,” Chuck said absently. He managed to pick up all the shards of mug without cutting himself and brushed them hastily into the trash. When he straightened up again, Dean’s arm was along the back of his chair and he was craning his neck to look at him.

“You all right there? Did you see something freaky or something?”

There was no way Chuck was going to answer that question. Even if Alastair…okay, if Alastair so much as _looked_ at him in real life, within seconds he’d be doing more singing than Bill. Good thing that fucker was dead.

“There’s still whiskey, right?” Chuck said, looking around hopefully. “We’re out of milk, but there’s still whiskey?”

“Dude, it’s eight in the morning.”

“It’s part of his _process_ , Dean,” Castiel said, admonishingly. Chuck could have kissed him.

Oh, scratch that, scratch that! Take the big red pen of doom and scratch that right _out_.

“I really need that drink,” Chuck said.

* * *

Back up in his room, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, Chuck sank miserably onto his bed. “Bill,” he said, “help me out.”

Bill scratched at his food pellets. In parakeet, this probably meant something like, _Dude, I can’t tell you whether or not you should include a gay sex scene in your holy gospel. I’m a freakin’ BIRD._

Chuck curled up and put his pillow over his head. The alcohol was not working fast enough.

* * *

Okay, two things:

1) Chuck was _not_ homophobic. Not at all! He knew plenty of really nice—but that wasn’t the point. The point was:

2) Dean was _Dean_. Chuck’s Han Solo! Han Solo, as previously discussed, did stuff with Princess Leia and her metal bikini. Not, you know, _that_. With angels. Guy angels.

Right, so, to review:

CHUCK WAS NOT HOMOPHOBIC.

DEAN WAS NOT GAY.

Chuck wrote that down. Then he underlined it a couple of times.

* * *

“I’m being kind of ridiculous about this, aren’t I, Bill?”

* * *

It hadn’t happened yet; of that he was pretty sure. And if Dean and Castiel had proven anything (aside from the fact that they could _totally break_ what little remained of Chuck’s brain), it was that what Chuck saw was not _actually_ set in stone, archangels be damned. Or whatever. The point was, he could change things. If he went downstairs right now, if he _told_ them…well, that might be enough right there.

He could feel Bill staring at him. Those little beady bird eyes were saying something like, _Don’t be a douche, Chuck._

* * *

There was a pile of pages over by the printer, heavily annotated with red ink. Chuck shuffled over and then began to shuffle through, turning the pages this way and that, looking. He wasn’t really sure what he was looking for, just—

_Dean and the angel exchanged an intense stare. “I’ll wash and you dry, all right?” Dean said finally. He walked to the sink, and Castiel followed him, steady as a shadow. Dean turned on the water and passed Castiel a dishtowel, which the angel held loosely, like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it. Dean stopped squirting dish soap everywhere and took the cloth back out of Castiel’s hand. He set it on the counter, then moved his fingers to the edge of the angel’s shirtsleeve, pausing to look him in the eye, as if asking permission. Castiel stood as still as a doll as Dean rolled his sleeve up, revealing a pale, surprisingly skinny, arm. The steam from the hot water pounding down on the dirty dishes was making the hunter’s cheeks flush red._

What story had he been writing? Chuck had no idea anymore.

* * *

His room was beginning to make him feel claustrophobic. He had to get out. He went to the door, pausing only to look back at Bill. “Sorry about the cage, man. I feel ya.”

He went downstairs. Dean and Castiel were thankfully nowhere to be seen; neither were Sam and Anna. Bobby was in the living room, reading and taking notes from a hefty-looking book that was written in…well, a language that wasn’t English, anyway.

“What?” said Bobby eventually, as Chuck continued to emulate a rock.

“Um. Well. I was wondering…”

“Spit it out, boy!”

Chuck found himself rolling his eyes. “I’m _thirty-nine_. Just— Yeah. Anyway. All I wanted to know was if there was anything I could do. Like, to help out. Around the house.”

Bobby opened his mouth. “And I already did the damn dishes,” Chuck interrupted.

Bobby regarded him thoughtfully.

* * *

The washer and dryer were, disconcertingly, right next to the panic room. Sam wasn’t in there, for once, and frankly, Chuck kind of wished he was. It was stupid to be afraid of a _basement_ when he knew there were vampires and demons and, like, the forces of darkness out there—when he knew that, comparatively, Bobby’s basement was one of the safest places you could be. None of that changed the fact, Chuck thought, shoving a very flannel-heavy load of clothes into the washer, that it was creepy as fuck down here.

It was as if he had wished it— _I don’t want to be in the basement anymore_ —because suddenly he _wasn’t_. He was standing in Bobby’s living room, and Bobby and Dean and Sam and Castiel were all there too, all but the last looking equally bewildered. Even _Bill_ was there, Chuck realized, spotting his parakeet fluttering awkwardly on the carpet. It didn’t make any sense. It was like someone had summoned all the living creatures in the house to the same place…

As if on cue (and Chuck made a mental note to come up with a more suspenseful transitional phrase if ( _when_ ) he wrote this up later), Zachariah appeared in front of them. “Well look at that,” he said. “The gang’s all here!”

“Get out,” Dean growled. He started forward, stopping only at the touch of Castiel’s restraining hand. The look in Castiel’s eyes was intense—no. He looked fucking _furious_ ; that was the word. Dude was _motherfucking pissed._

“Zachariah,” he said levelly, “you are not welcome here.”

Zachariah glanced over his shoulder, theatrically. “Oh, did I miss the sign on your little clubhouse? ‘No Righteous Angels Allowed’?” He let out a heavy sigh. “I tried so hard with you, Castiel, tried to make you see the right path. I have to say I am very, _very_ disappointed.

“And Sam!” The angel’s gaze shifted, and even with it only passing over him, Chuck felt a chill. “What’s this? You look like a circus freak. Is this really better than the whole black-eyed look? At least with that you can still go out in public if you buy a decent pair of sunglasses.”

“Leave my brother alone,” Dean said.

Zachariah shook his head, tisking like a disgruntled vice principal. “Ah, that’s not how this works. _I’m_ going to be giving the orders, not you.”

Dean was holding himself very tight; Chuck could see the lines of strain, the cracks in the façade, but it was nevertheless a noble effort. “You go ahead and order all you want, pal. Maybe if you’re lucky, Dominos will eventually bring you a pizza.”

Zachariah looked unfazed by this bit of off-the-cuff banter. (Chuck used to think he was so _witty_ , coming up with this stuff.) “Sorry, sport. You pledged your loyalty to me. Castiel accomplished that much before he turned his back on the light. So when I tell you to come…” Zachariah’s voice shifted subtly; Chuck could feel the change in his bones. “ _Come here, Dean. Grab your pathetic excuse for a brother and come to me._ ”

Chuck held his breath. He’d be willing to say everyone in the room was. He stared at Dean, watching him for any kind of movement—a teeter, a tremble.

What happened was: Dean’s shoulders relaxed. “Um, no,” he said, sounding at first relieved, then confused. He moved quickly back to defiant: “Nice try, you overgrown turkey. Your Jedi mind tricks obviously don’t work on me.”

Zachariah’s eyes had widened slightly in surprise but were already narrowing again in anger. “You will obey the will of heaven! You pledged yourself!”

“Actually,” said Castiel, seeming to relish the way the word unfurled on his tongue. “He pledged himself to God. And to me.”

Chuck could tell that the _Suck it_ was meant to be implied.

Zachariah’s grin grew even more knife-like. “You are coming with me, one way or the other. I am perfectly happy to do this the hard way if—”

Everything that happened next occurred so quickly that it registered in Chuck’s mind as barely more than a blur. Zachariah stepped forward, bringing his shiny black shoes perilously close to Bill’s tiny parakeet body. “Hey!” Chuck said, emerging without thought from where he was kind of sort of hiding behind Sam and Bobby. “Back away from my bird!”

Zachariah’s gaze swiveled to him like a hawk. “You,” the angel said, and Chuck wished he were back in the basement; he wished Castiel was catching him trying to dial-a-hooker; he wished he was watching Dean and Cas have gay sex in his head. He wanted to be anywhere but here, basically. But no: “You were given an important task, Chuck Shurley, and you let us down. You’ve been using your holy gift to aid the enemy. Do you know what I’m going to do with you?”

In his heart of hearts, Chuck wanted to be like his hero, his Han Solo. Like Dean. And so he said, slightly squeaky but nevertheless defiant: “Scold me?”

Zachariah’s expression didn’t change. Reaching down, he scooped Bill up into his hand and crushed the life out of him with one casual squeeze of his fist.

When the little body dropped to the carpet, it barely made a sound.

“Who’s next?” asked Zachariah.

“Do not fucking move!”

Chuck was a little surprised to realize that was him. He was also rather surprised to discover that he had taken his red pen out of the pocket of his bathrobe and was pointing it at Zachariah in a manner that he hoped was at least somewhat reminiscent of the-Doctor-with-his-sonic-screwdriver. His arm was only shaking a little.

Zachariah began to laugh. “Humans!” he said. “Sometimes, Castiel, I can almost see what you like about them. They’re _adorable_.”

“Shut up, asshole!” That was him again, apparently. “I can fucking end you!”

“Oh, please,” said Zachariah, the cocky schmuck, “tell me _how_.”

Chuck’s fingers were sweaty, but he managed to pop the cap off his pen. “I’m a prophet of the Lord! My word is Law! I can wipe you out with a single stroke of this thing.”

The angel rolled his eyes. “That’s not how it works.”

“Oh yeah?” Chuck, ridiculously, felt his confidence building: he was inventing something, pulling words from the air and stringing them together until they had meaning. Until they had weight. “Things have changed, or haven’t you noticed? Dean went to the convent; he got Sam away from Lucifer before it was too late. Castiel defied you and evaded archangels. And I don’t just see things and then scribble them down anymore. I’m a goddamn _writer_ , pal. I _make_ things happen!”

He took a breath, let it out steadily. “And I think you’ve gone just about as far as you can go as a character. Nobody really likes you. I think it’s time to write you out.”

“You can’t _do_ that,” Zachariah said. But he’d taken a step back.

Chuck spent a panicked half-second scrambling around for a writeable surface before Bobby shoved his own pad of notes into his hand. Chuck spun the pen in his fingers, held it poised above the page. “ _Try me_.”

He didn’t even bother to hold his breath this time. He knew he’d won.

“This isn’t over,” Zachariah said.

“You won’t mind if I write some better dialogue for you, do you? ’Cause your clichéd villain lines suck!”

Chuck felt this insult still rocked pretty hard, even though Zachariah teleported away before he could finish getting it out.

With Zachariah gone, it felt like the air rushed back into the room. Chuck swayed a little on his feet. Then he let himself slump down to his knees. “Oh my God! Bill!”

Chuck felt Dean come up beside him. “Chuck, man…that was. Wow.” He gave Chuck a manly punch to the shoulder.

There was a time when this would have made Chuck’s day. Right now, though… “He killed my parakeet.”

“That took stones, son,” Bobby said. Chuck supposed _son_ was better than _boy_. But still—

“That asshole killed my parakeet!” If any of them said anything like, _It was only a bird_ , forget the fact that he’d probably get beat up: he was going to _punch_ them.

But instead there was just: “I’m really sorry, man”—Sam, quietly. And then Castiel, kneeling down beside him: “Chuck, I’m not sure, but…”

Castiel lifted Bill into his hands, then cupped them together and raised them to his lips. He blew, gently.

When he opened his fingers, Bill was standing on his palm, his head cocked to the side in a curious tilt. Bill gave Castiel’s hand a careful (grateful?) peck, then stretched out his little wings. They weren’t clipped anymore, like they’d been when Chuck got him from the pet store, but full and perfect and capable of real flight. Bill flapped them experimentally, then lifted up off Castiel’s palm and soared toward the ceiling.

He circled once around the room before spiraling down to land on Chuck’s shoulder.

“Bill!” said Chuck.

“Chirp,” said Bill.

“Dude,” said Sam. “Are you…?”

Dean blinked his eyes rapidly. “Over a bird? No. Shut up.”

Bobby let out a weary sigh. “Who wants a beer?”

Everyone wanted at least two.

* * *

Chuck didn’t feel much like sleeping that night. He wanted to write. He wrote about himself being awesome, of course, and about Castiel saving Bill, and about Dean totally not crying. And then he went back and wrote about how hard Bobby worked, all the time, and about how much Sam wanted to do better, be better, to the point where he was willing to mark his promise out on his skin.

Then he wrote a little bit about Dean and Cas, about how they were together, and what it meant, but he wasn’t getting it right, wasn’t in the right headspace yet, and so he put it aside for now. “Tomorrow is another day, right, Bill?” he said. And Bill suggested in bird that things that were worth doing were worth doing right.

Chuck still didn’t feel like going to sleep, though, so he opened up a fresh document and, not intimidated at all by the blinking cursor and all that white, began to write.

Theories were worth testing, after all. And he knew better than most that sometimes, just because you made something up, didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

When he was done, he printed but didn’t save, then tiptoed downstairs and left the pages somewhere conspicuous, where he knew she’d find them.

He went back upstairs and slept without dreaming.

* * *

Chuck’s brain was thinking nothing but _coffee coffee coffee_ when he went downstairs the next morning, so it almost shut down completely when he found Anna standing next to the machine. “Chuck!” she said brightly. “I’m so glad you’re here! I couldn’t wait another moment to see you. There’s so much I want to tell you…”

She came toward him. Chuck had to fight the urge to scramble for something to hide behind. He’d hoped, yes, but— He couldn’t believe this was _actually happening_ —

“This,” Anna said, holding to her heart the selection of pages Chuck had printed out for her, that he really hadn’t expected her to find so quickly, before he possibly got to think better of it, unless— “I don’t know how to thank you.” Chuck’s heart leapt. “It’s the funniest thing I have _ever_ read.” And plummeted again. “The part where I tell you that your penis tastes like heaven? _Priceless_.”

She thumped the loose paper against his chest. “If the prophet thing doesn’t work out, you could get a job at SNL.”

He scrambled to hold the pages—not to mention himself—together. “Um,” he said, sure that he was now as red as his pen. “Yesterday was kind of weird? My bird died and I fought off Zachariah with a pen and then Castiel brought Bill back to life and Bobby called me son and Dean told me I was cool and possibly I drank too much? Can we just forget this ever happened?”

Anna clapped him on the shoulder. “I’d wipe it from your mind, but I can’t do the same thing for myself so we’re just gonna have to fake it.” She leaned close to his ear. “The way I was totally faking my orgasms in your story, right?”

“Um,” said Chuck, nearly choking on his tongue. “Right.” She seemed to be waiting for something. “I mean…even fictitiously, I couldn’t get you off at all. I wasn’t, uh, man enough…”

“Okay, that’s enough, Chuck.” She looked almost sorry for him again, almost all angelic and full of grace and compassion. Chuck wondered if she knew Dean and Cas were doing it. It might be amusing to tell her.

But right now he just muttered, “Sorry!” and scurried upstairs again.

“Well,” he told Bill, tossing the handful of papers into the trash,. “It was worth a shot.”

* * *

Chuck was trying to discover if he had a potential career in gay porn.

You know, in case the prophet thing didn’t work out. Or the SNL gig.

So far it was going okay. He was having a little bit of pronoun trouble, though—a sentence like _He took his cock in his hand and pumped it slowly, working his rough palm over the sensitive skin until he was moaning and writhing beneath him in pleasure_ was kind of confusing. Maybe if he switched in descriptions like “the rugged hunter” or “the spiky-haired angel”?

Or maybe not.

He decided to go back to the beginning and read the scene over.

_Dean shut the door to his room. He turned. Castiel was sitting on the edge of the bed. They were both silent, staring at each other intensely._

_Finally, Dean said, “So I pledged myself to you, huh?”_

_The angel shrugged his shoulders, a light, oddly-human motion. “You were the one that changed the wording, Dean. I simply did not bother to correct you.”_

_“Nice trick,” Dean said, moving closer._

_“I wish I could say I had been fully aware of its import at the time.”_

_“But you’re fully aware now, though, right?” Dean asked, looking down at the angel through his thick, honestly somewhat girly, eyelashes. Some people honestly shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that he was trying too hard with the macho stuff a lot of the time. Though he was still pretty awesome._

_“Yes, Dean,” Castiel said, and you really have to wonder if he picked such a pretty vessel on purpose._

_“So if_ you _tell me to come…” Dean straddled Castiel’s legs, settling himself on the angel’s lap._

_“Oh, you’ll come,” Castiel said huskily. “Wherever we are, whenever I want you to_

Okay, there was no way in hell anyone was going to believe this dialogue was real. Even if Chuck put a big disclaimer at the beginning of this chapter: YES, THESE GUYS REALLY ARE THIS CHEESEBALL. I SAW IT IN MY HEAD AND THEN I GOT THE RERUN ’CAUSE BOBBY’S WALLS ARE REGRETTABLY THIN. TRUST ME ON THIS. Nope. They’d never buy it.

The bit he had later about dueling tongues and Dean’s member thrusting against Castiel’s man—angel?—hood wouldn’t exactly help his case.

No, maybe he was better off fading to black, keeping everything, like, just heavily _implied_. It was a _holy gospel_ , after all.

Bill swooped down and landed atop Chuck’s monitor. He chirped. Chuck stared at him, and wished that he was a little better at bird.

It was a gospel, he thought. His words, what he wrote—people would read it. It would tell them of the heroes of the past, and help them see how they could better live _their_ lives.

What he wrote.

He thought for a minute, then carefully highlighted the bulk of the scene and hit control-x.

Chuck read over what was left and made one small change.

_Dean shut the door to his room. He turned. Castiel was sitting on the edge of the bed. They were both silent, staring at each other adoringly._

Chuck sat back in his chair. “Okay, call me a sap, Bill. But I think that’s pretty good.”


End file.
